Back in August, I participated in a collaboration put on by my friend Julie Prichard over at Land of Lost Luggage. We are tracking the seasonal progress of a local tree of our choosing. This week everyone is posting their "fall" entry...goody goody!

You all know how I feel about fall, fall trees, fall color, fall weather...anything fall, I'm all about it. You could say, I'm all about fall. HA! Ok, sorry. Let me get the train back to the station.

I need to vent about my tree selection. I am very disappointed in myself for the tree I picked for this project. VERY disappointed. Any of you who know my neighborhood (and my region) know the color there is. But my lady has left me wanting. She's a late bloomer, I knew that from last year - but wasn't thinking about it when I chose her back in August. Nevertheless, I need to stick with her...I'm hoping that for the "winter" submission, she will dazzle me with some snow-covered branches. Let's hope...

So, let's take a closer look at my lady:








Not to make my lady feel bad, but this is the tree I should have chosen...it's right down the street from my house:

Awww...she's a beauty. I'm just sayin.

Shhhhhhh.....can you hear it?

It's the sound of my internals SQUEALING with excitement!

It's fall, baby. That means TREES. Trees of ALL colors, shapes, sizes. I am in tree heaven. I even love dead tress - especially when contrasted with the living!

click for full sized image

This weekend, I should have the opportunity to travel south a bit and capture some gorgeous color. Stay tuned...but if you can't wait until then to see tree pictures, take a quick trip here and here to see some of my pics from 2008.

I'm all geeked out about the trees....so what's geeking you out this fall??

I have been wondering for the past few weeks what in the world could inspire me to take a time out from the busyness of my life right now and put together a post. Well, there have been many inspirations, but the subsequent "time out" never comes.

Today is a new day, friends! I had an impromptu day off today which I have used very productively. Of course it's 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas, but we don't need to talk about that right now. As an added bonus, Mike just offered to pick up the kids from school...I feel like I just won the lottery.

So my productive day has left me with a bit of a moment to do something I've wanted to do the past few days. What is that, you ask? Participate in a collaboration with the readers of The Land of Lost Luggage. We are setting out to document a single trees journey from Summer to Fall/Winter to Spring.

And you know how I am ALL GEEKED OUT about my trees. I can't even go into it right now.

Let's look at our contestant. This beautiful lady hails from the great state of Tennessee. She's modest in size, but full of lush green leaves. She likes swaying in the breeze and providing shade to the adjacent playground on a hot summer day. Sometimes, you can catch our gal being especially frisky and letting the local squirrels onto her branches. GASP!

Here she is:



I'm sure JeriAnn will have no problem telling me what kind of tree this is by looking at the leaves:



We will be taking pictures of our trees again during the week of November 8 and again during the week of April 4, 2010. I can only pray there might be a snow here so I can snap off an extra credit pic!!

Would you like to participate with us? Get your entry in, pronto....head over and see Julie at Lost Luggage and put your deets in. If you don't want to participate with your own tree, feel free to just stalk all the rest of us who are participating. I won't tell.

Arbor-iginally yours,

k